View From The Peak

Some thoughts to ponder overnight:

• I reached my goal of owning an Italian sports car.
• I reached my goal of working in Europe.
• I reached my goal of holding a certain number of jobs to qualify myself as a journal-keeping journeyman so I could have some things interesting to write about.
• I reached my goal of getting professional reviews of a novel of mine.
• I reached my goal of being wealthy enough to retire at age 45.
• I reached my goal of teaching young people the "secrets" to life.

Now that I've reached all my goals, what do I do next, especially if the ways of the world have lost interest to me?

I know who I am. I know where I do or don't belong. I know how to laugh. I have cried when I didn't want to.

Only one dream left of mine that I have not completely lived. When I was a child, I saw myself as an 85-year old man standing on the steps of a church in Greeneville, Tennessee, handing sticks of chewing gum to children and telling them short stories of wisdom in the form of funny jokes, turning my love of humor into the life of an old laughing guru. But I have fulfilled that dream through my middle-aged teaching gig, showing students that humor and goals/dreams are the yin/yang of success. In the depths of my understanding, I believe the person in my childhood dream is representative of those who find wisdom in their later years when they have time to reflect on their lives. Instead, I have spent the first 45 years of my life reflecting on my life and the lives of others in order to build wisdom in half the time that some take.

In my current set of thoughts, I have climbed to the peak of the mountain upon whose feet I was born. I am not a wise guru or sage. I have only my thoughts and my life upon which I have built the strength to reach the mountaintop. Many of us have climbed the mountains of our lives and looked at each other. This we already know. We can see each other and nod without speaking to know that we're comfortable with our being. We do not need each other and do not put obligations on the other. We sit and meditate upon our thoughts. We see an ocean of humans below us, clamoring for attention, fighting one another, carrying hidden agendas and ulterior motives under their cloaks, putting extra burdens upon themselves and doing all sorts of things that prevent them from reaching the tops of their mountains.

Where do I physically go in the real world to simulate this place of peace, my mountaintop? I will sit and meditate upon this thought for a while. The answer is there but I cannot see it yet. Patience teaches more lessons than haste. A walk in the woods always helps, even if not all the wooded area that my feet crunch dry leaves underneath is in my name.

Upon what can one survive? Where is knowledge of nutritional needs and self-reliance in the quiet days of one's peaceful existence?

I assume these blog updates would disappear in order for me to reach full balance with myself, eliminating wasteful use of data centers, telephone lines, power plants, and computing technology. I can return to the half-filled paper journals lying around, without buying more for many years to come, if I feel the need to continue to write.

What of my ties to the economy in the form of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, IRAs, property holdings, cash and such? Hmm...I am not trying to reach some perfect one-man band break from the rest of humanity. Or am I? In one way, yes, I am ensuring that I am not personally attached to social hierarchies. No obligations to others. But neither am I severing all ties to humankind. I, like so many others, am finding a way to reduce my participation in the supply-and-demand cycle of the marketplace, doing away with my tax burden in the process. If I have no income, buy/sell no goods, and own no property, then what do I owe any government? Is there a place in the world where self-reliance and lack of government obligations peacefully co-exist?

Politicians, civil servants and military personnel have a vested self-interest in promoting the existence of territorial governments that gather taxes from residents of their territories. Tenured teachers have a vested self-interest in promoting the existence of institutes of learning where people must pay to go before getting official positions in the working world. Stockholders have a vested self-interest in promoting the existence of corporations that have all the rights of real people, charging others for the ideas and products that the corporate bodies have. So who is left to promote the existence of humans to live free of the cost of organizations on this planet?

There are sellers of books promoting frugal living. I suppose I should return to that area of learning to find part of the answer I seek. Some of their ideas certainly led to my being able to retire at 45 (for instance, I bought two Italian sports cars for less than a total of $8000 by shopping smartly and fixing/repairing the cars myself, saving LOTS of money; I buy off-brand goods with the same quality/ingredients of name-brand goods; I pay cash for off-season vacations, rather than use credit cards for peak-season trips; I never buy large-ticket items on impulse; my wife and I bought one house and paid it off; my wife and I have owned three new vehicles in almost 23 years of marriage, a luxury we decided we could afford).

Is there a book about a place where the millionaire next door can go live out a peaceful existence for the rest of his life after he's reached all his goals, lived all his dreams, and fulfilled all his obligations, more at risk of natural storms than the political and economic storms that sweep through the lives of socially connected humans? Hey, this is my life. I reached all my other goals so just let me have this dream of a one-person utopia out there somewhere that I can reach if I keep searching long enough. At least for tonight.